Bug Found in NASA Climate Data

[FVZA_Colonel]

http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+finds+Y2K+bug+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm



Years of bad data corrected; 1998 no longer the warmest year on record


My earlier column this week detailed the work of a volunteer team to assess problems with US temperature data used for climate modeling. One of these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or "jump" in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.

These graphs were created by NASA's Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.

McKintyre notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an "oversight" that would be fixed in the next data refresh.

[radfringe]

1. wouldn't be surprised if that bug

was a cockroach - they can survive in any climate... :rofl:

[jgraz]

2. Oh shit, the holocaust - er - global warming deniers are going to eat this up

Just wait. They can spew endless hours of mindless bullshit about the environment with little or no consequence, but if the actual scientists make a mistake they're going to be raked over the coals.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. It's a RW blogger citing another RW blogger

Read the whole article. The title alone gives half of the picture.

I'll wait until their curiously facile explanation -- and denunciation of the "U.S. global warming propaganda machine" -- can be checked out.

--p!

[FVZA_Colonel]

4. That phrase alone threw me, but I was curious as to what impact a bug of this nature

could have on current theories of human-induced climate change.

Of course, even if this is valid, the adjustments do not seem to be of that great a scale.


On Edit: And RealClimate's explanation (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/) certainly skewers it rather well.

[Dogmudgeon]

7. Yeah, RealClimate usually cuts though the bullshit

Hansen's work has been inspected in more detail than Paris Hilton's whatsits. If he had made ANY mistakes, they would have been discovered and given wider publicity that the Second Coming.

There is a lot of money riding on "debunking" global warming. But it's based on solid evidence and real heat. The carbon isotope ratio studies clinched it for me -- the "Smoking Isotope" as I call it now. If a denier can't or won't read those, they just ain't doin' science.

--p!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. "1998 no longer the warmest year on record"

That's because 2006 was the warmest year on record.

Followed by 2005... 2004... 2003... 2002...

And so on in that fashion.

[Birthmark]

6. This has been fun for me.

The denialists' have their own Piltdown Man...and, man, are they trying to use him. Unfortunately for them, the data modifies *US* temperatures only. I have yet to see any evidence that this will substantively change *global* temperatures. After all, the US really isn't that big. But the denialists really are having fun.